Streets Alive event to kick off EcoMobility Fest

22 September 2015

 

 

All Johannesburg residents are invited to attend the opening event of the Eco-Mobility Festival, on Sunday 4th October.

 

On this day, dubbed “Streets Alive #Joziwr1”, there will be a carnival-like atmosphere on the streets between Sandton and Alexandra which will be closed off to vehicles and opened up to residents to walk, dance, skateboard or cycle.

The Festival will also be officially opened by the Minister of Transport, Dipuo Peters and the Premier of Gauteng David Makhura.

The Festival is jointly hosted by the City of Johannesburg and the Local Government for Sustainability (ICLEI) under the theme: “Change the Way You Move.”

In addition to closing off certain lanes in Sandton – the most congested urban space in Johannesburg, with almost 100 000 people moving in and out of the suburb during peak-hour periods daily – there will be an international set of dialogues, the hosting of an international exhibition, cycle rides, sport weekends and opportunities for members of the public to ride ecomobile vehicles.

Several international experts in non-motorised transport, strategic planning and policy, and transport and urban design, will descend on Johannesburg in October toattend the EcoMobility World Dialogues. .

Some of the high-profile technical experts who will take part in the EcoMobility Dialogues 2015 – to be held at the Sandton Convention from October 5-9 include Camilla Ween, Director of Goldstein Ween Architects in the United Kingdom; Timothy Papandreou, Director of Strategic Planning & Policy at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency in the United States. SanthoshKodukula, Programme Manager at ICLEI – EcoMobility, Susan Zielinski,from the University of Michigan in the USA and Iván De la Lanza, Director of Design, Culture and Bicycle Infrastructure in Mexico City.

The dialogues will focus on how cities could advance sustainable and low-carbon urban mobility. These discussions will culminate in the release of a “Declaration on Low Carbon Urban Transport” for the COP21 in Paris in December 2015.

Members of the public are invited to quiz the Executive Mayor, Councillor Parks Tau on why the City is hosting the festival at a public imbizo on Tuesday 6th October at 17:30.

Mayor Tau will also lead an international Mayors’ EcoMobility Ride through the cordoned-off streets of Sandton to express the world municipal leaders’ support for cleaner and greener ways to commute.

All events are free and open to the public.

Johannesburg is the second city to host the biennial EcoMobility World Festival. The first was Suwon in South Korea in 2013.